I Am Only Human
by Maya Sushi
Summary: Look at yourself. You are human. Look,you are. And so am I. I will die and you will die and perhaps we will never see one another again. But we were, look, here we are, and we will never be again, and that is what makes us so beautiful. Right now.


_**Disclaimer: **_I don't own FMA. Or EdWin, that's just canon. ;)

_**A/N: **_I'm actually pretty proud of this one, just because I rather like it. I reworked it a lot. Hope you guys like it too!

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**_I Am Only Human_**

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**One**

It is on this day that it comes to pass that he die the way he always imagined he would.

He is a warrior, at heart, and it is fitting that he meets his end this way. On the sharp skewer of another's malice – it is where he has always been destined to lie, from the moment he emerged, screaming and wailing, from his mother's womb – dying against the sharp edge of some isignificant's blade, the flaming end of his bullet, his coldly calculated theory. He was a fool himself, for every minute of his life lived in ignorance; that all of his opinions were fashioned from the broken and shattered remains of his wild, feral regrets. Killed then, by a fool, who is so because of the brief excursion of power he holds now in his hands and does not recognize. In that he has condemned himself to a life that has led up to every moment – that had led to this moment – in which the fragility of life lay wasted and meaningless by his own doing, and he has missed it. He has not even noticed. He has blinked, and then he has forgot. And he will not understand, ever, for he is a fool, nameless and human, that each breath he takes is new and solely _his. _That he may have had the _gall _to steal this last breath from another being. Another fool, most likely, for the world is full of them.

Assume then, that no mortal will truly understand the beauty of their own mortality, their own imminent doom, until they are faced with it. Reality claims, then, that not even in this brief moment of finality will all see their own perfection. That some men will die quick and blind, and live sightless until that day.

Yes, in the end, he was a fool. He is a fool. For every waking moment of his life he had been this way, and a person does not simply morph into a greater sentient being as they lay dying. He is only human – still, as he always was – and he knows this. He has known this for a very long time. There are chapters in his short life that would shake even the most hardened of soldier's souls. There are pages so consumed and colored with bright, startling hues that they surprise even him. Yet each color bares so much resemblance to the crimson of death, no matter the shade or tone, that it is terrifying. Still, it is wonderful in its weakness. It is trembling, and it threatens to break.

Being human – he knows, unlike so many others – and dying, here, now, after, is miraculous. Let it be known that it is the greatest gift he could have ever received, and that he plans to part with his life with the simple joy of knowing that he had _been._ That soon, he would cease to _be, _and that it was in the end that lay not a new beginning, but only what it was: a true, final end, and nothing more.

You are a fool. This is what he wants to tell the man as he departs from his meager existence. Look at yourself. Look. Can't you see?  
These are the words that lay unspoken upon his tongue as his own golden eyes peer up toward the being that will take from him his life, as he kneels on the hard slab of all-powerful earth beneath him and falls from the man's blade as it reaches back from his chest. It had entered, deep, blindly grasping outward and inward simultaneously for the flesh and passion reward of his heart, and had narrowly missed, only moments before. It had bit at him with senseless ire, twisted with indignation, and it was soundlessly that blood percolated from his mouth. He tasted its heavy weight upon his tongue. Swallow me, it calls, if you dare to consume yourself. Take me back, envelope me in acid and tear me apart, or leave me be, and I will carve a trail of scarlet words across your skin and you will have found immortality.

Glory.

He knew this too. That in the end he had found the secret to the eternal life that others had so avariciously pursued. It was this: glory. For he would live forever, long after his last quivering breath escaped his lungs his name would roll off of the tongues of generation after generation. "He was," they will say, "he was and he _always_ will be."

**Two**

You are human.

This is what he wants to tel the woman that cradles him in her arms as he soils her with the essence of death. That when he's lost to her, after all she thought she knew of death, she will realize she had never known death at all. Naïve, she was, a fool, and human too – as we all are, and we will always, almost unknowingly, be.

Look at yourself. You are human. Look, he wants to say, you are. And so am I. I will die and you will die and perhaps we will never see one another again. Perhaps we will never exist again. Perhaps we will be perpetually _gone. _But we _were, _look, here we _are, _and we will never _be_ again, and that is why we are so beautiful. Right _now._

So he tell her this, he does – and she sobs as if her eyes are the mouth of a great, sorrowful river, and she presses her lips to his saltine skin again and again, _everywhere_, with desperation – and then he says more. When he speaks again it is not for her, it is for himself. Because he is human, and this fact makes him selfish. Since his very creation. He is no great hero, as no human truly can be, for they are without meaning, pure, and he knows that they, as a race – humans, that is – are delicate and picturesque but have no meaning.

He tells her, carefully, and for himself, even though he knows it will only pull more pain from her soul, "You are beautiful. Look at you. I love you."

There is truth in that it is also selfish of him – but not regretted – that he does not want her to see him die. Does not want to live lifeless in the eternity of her memories. The danger around them, he knows, is still great. Though he can no longer see past her. So great that her presence, that her humanity, is threatened, and despite how wonderfully beautiful the concept and clarity of his mind in this moment, it is still within the realm of reality that she may find some way to join him if she stay. This he does not want. He is to be the only soul to be stolen tonight. So that she may keep on _being, _and keep on living, in this horrifying perception of glorious existence so easily constructed around them – so that she may continue taking for granted her greatest gift – and so that he could delay the moment in which she would, possibly, realize it, he tells her to go.

"Go." He shudders, feeling that it is with the last of his steadily waning strength that he bequeaths this of her, "Go, please, go."

Glory.

It is so little and less satisfying in the face of what he finds in her then. In the emotion that placates his reeling soul, still trapped within this strange, momentous calm – all the same – and discovery. Discover again and again as he realized for the nth time that she truly loves him. In the very same way that he loves her, so much that it pains him. And that they are human and they _were_ and they _are, _and this: _here_ they are. They are _here, now, _and they are facing the rue of their own mortality and humanity in one, great climax. His.

"Go," he breathes once more, and with the last of his strength presses a fleetingly light kiss to her temple. He is losing the reigns he has always held fast to, the ones that govern his own consciousness, his own being, and he does not want her to be here, in needless grief, when he is lost. "It's okay."

And after she goes he finds that he is not disappointed in the way he ends. For if it is true, scathingly so, so true that it burns him, that life is life and death is death and everything in between in anything but those two things. And if it is true that he has lived in life and he will die in death and all the while he has been human. Well, then what more could he ask for?

**Three**

She would go home, eventually. She would have to. Alone.

She would look in the mirror and try to piece together all the little shards that were her life – shattered suddenly, for they had been whole when he was there to hold them together – and she will look at herself. She will think of him and she will say, "I am human. I am only human, and tomorrow, tomorrow I will fall apart." …

… and so she shall. There she will be, spread all across the floor. She will be blinding in the light that she has succumbed to her own ineluctable ruination, her irrevocable downfall, and she will glisten with the steady sheen of it. Like a warrior – and he was a warrior, at heart – who returns from a great battle knowing exactly what they are. I am a warrior. Says he. I am only human. Says she.

Later, then – later is something that only time can possibly determine, and so she waits, and whether it be a day or a week, it will be, undeniably, later – she will look upon that same reflection and she will swallow her qualms and see the iron and steel within herself. She will see that she is weak and below that tender skin, a permeable exoskeleton, are veins flush with blood so easily spilled that at any instant she could be killed. She will bring up from the very bottom of her toes the pretense of strength, and she will add onto it bit by bit as it travels up herself, until, finally, it reaches her mouth – where it takes form, so strong, by now; she has always been strong.

She will say, "I am human. I am only human, and tomorrow, tomorrow I will move on." Because this is the way the world works. Each human is constantly shedding their own skin, breathing new air, and in each second is a new experience that will _never_ be again. She will _never_ be here again, and neither will he. The time of experiencing him is over, nothing will change that – so what else can she do but keep _being?_

**Four**

She has a dream, and in this dream she is a woman. In this dream, he is a man. There is a man and a woman and they lay within each others arms and they _are, _and they will never _be _again, but they are there, they are beautiful. Right _now._

Her back is bare against their bed and her head is cushioned against the warm skin of his chest. An arm is wrapped around her shoulders in a familiar embrace, and on another plane of existence is his other hand, and it trails down the soft column of her throat and across the planes of her face...

...and they are only human.

A man and a woman, that is all.

Then the man speaks, and his voice washes over her with a pang of waking melancholy and nostalgia, but soothes her all the same. Where will you go?

"Where will you go?" he asks, and she closes her eyes when his fingers feather over the soft skin of her eyelids. He says nothing more, but she knows this question. She has had this dream before.

The woman sighs in her silent tranquility and contemplates all the same, humming, she responds. When I die? When I am gone?

"I don't know."

He smiles then, and it lights up more than his face. It lights up the world, she thinks, every inch of it.

Where will I go? She thinks to ask.

I don't know, he will answer, if she does, and if she doesn't …

… the man will lean over her, his hands holding tight to her face, and he will answer the unspoken question that was in her own answer.

"Exactly," he coos, breathing a sigh of warm breath against her ear, and she can feel his grin grow against her skin, "and that's what's so beautiful about it."


End file.
